Today I wanna discuss a topic that I talk about often here at Dietitian Boss, and that's time management and productivity tips for dietitians now in today's episode. On the lens of how time management can help you with your business planning. So we've discussed this topic a lot, and you might be familiar with a few of the tactics.
So let me go through some of them. But again, I'll, I'll talk about through the lens of business planning. 'cause sometimes it can feel overwhelming to get started with your dietitian business, whether it's online, in person, private practice, taking insurance or cash pay. You have a lot of choices to make, and what I've noticed after working with a thousand dietitians and supporting them throughout the five years you've been in business is that finding a time, finding the right amount of time to do the right thing can be challenging.
This can be challenging for a lot of dietitians, so I wanna talk about what steps you can take to stay on track. So firstly I wanna talk about prioritizing your tasks. So this is something, a skill that you can learn with time and it can feel really overwhelming at first, which is why I'm a proprietary system.
I framed it out all for you. I've got workbooks and exercises and lesson plans to help you. Go through the framework that I have in my courses, and then write out through your exercises tactical information that's personalized to your unique business to help you progress. Now, that's the best way I can do it, is giving you choices and helping you write it down, but you still have to make the time to actually do it right, to sit there and go through the work.
So in the dietitian, Library. We have a membership that helps you do it on your own, and we offer live calls to support you. And then of course we have private coaching, which will do it with you, and that's a little bit more intensive. We have options. Both my team can work with you or I can work with you depending on your preferences and where you're at in your business.
So prioritizing tasks are, is really important. And in order to get better at prioritizing tasks, one of my tips would be to create a to-do list. Now, you might not be knowing, you might, you might not be aware with your to-do list of thinking. Well, what's most important? What do I get done first? And that's a great question.
So my tip would be to first start with a to-do list and then with time, get better at learning what tasks are most important to put on your to-do list, right? Because you can only get better in making a great to-do list by starting to make a to-do list and improving with time. That's gonna help you stay focused on what matters most and avoid getting bogged down by less important tasks.
Making a to-do list, whether it's on a. Post-it note, you're writing it on a journal or you're keeping it digital. Some of you would like to write to-do lists on your phone, on your notes app, or some other similar app can be a really helpful habit for you to build, even if you just have one or two things per day.
I recommend no more than three tasks that help you focus on business growth. Now, another tactic that you can try that I've talked about a lot on this podcast and in the business would be time blocking. This is one of my favorites. It's a little bit more advanced than a to-do list. I feel like everybody, every dietitian, listening, can make a to-do list, but when it comes to time blocking, it's gonna take a little bit more skill and discipline.
So time blocking is a technique where you block out specific periods of time for a certain task. So, for example, you might block out an hour in the morning to catch up with emails and then an hour in the afternoon to work on charting client notes or even just following up with your existing clients or maybe reaching out to potential clients.
Right? And this technique can help you stay focused and avoid distractions, right? 'cause it's really easy to just pop in and out of your emails and to respond to people as they reach out to you, which is, I think, a natural instinct a lot of us have as caretakers. But the idea of time blocking is opposite.
You're focusing on certain tasks that are similar at a similar time of the day. So you might block off 30 minutes after lunch or 30 minutes in the morning, and you might do this every day. You might decide you wanna do it twice a week, but that's the concept of time blocking. And you can start small with a 20 minute increment and then build up to maybe 30 minutes or even a 90 minute block of time.
It's just gonna take some practice. Now, the other tip I wanna give you is something that I've noticed as a mentor. Even outside of dietetics, I'm a, I'm sit on a board and I'm also a mentor for entrepreneurs in early stage of business who are earning revenues up to 250,000 under a million. And what I've noticed in mentoring business owners in that stage of business as well, is that they have a hard time taking breaks.
I have a mentee that doesn't wanna take a lunch break. I have another mentee that works throughout the day and gets really burnt out because throughout the week she doesn't incorporate any downtime. And I've seen that as well with our clients here. A Dietitian Boss. So taking regular breaks throughout the day can help you stay focused.
That it can be challenging because if you, there, there's, there's kind of two ends of the spectrum. You're either not making a to-do list and you're putting it off and it's a dream, or you're making the to-do list, but you're not balancing your time. Well enough and you end up becoming burnt out and fatigued and that can catch up.
You might not experience that burnout until later. It might just kind of creep up on you, but it would be best practice to take some breaks. That's why here a Dietitian Boss. I like spa day. Wednesdays. That means in the middle of the week, take some. Take a break and make it to the spot. It could be a massage.
It could be. For me, it's usually actually going to the day spa and spending half or a full day at the spa, and that's really helpful for me. I know our clients like to do that too and tag us on social media to create a sense of community, but you can really make that your own. You can even do manicure at home and consider that some spa time.
So you really have to make your own of how you wanna take breaks, but celebrate that you're taking time away from the to-do list as much as you spend time focusing on that to-do list. Let me know if that resonates. Tactic would be limiting distractions because as you know, in the world of technology and social media, distractions can be a major productivity killer for dietitians, really for anyone, but especially for dietitians who are looking to be online dietitians, if you're looking to create an impact in the virtual space.
It can be really challenging because you might, even if you don't have notifications turned on, you can get distracted really easily. So limiting distractions as much as possible, like turning off your phone notifications or closing unnecessary tabs can be really helpful. In order for you to stay focused, you might wanna try noise canceling headphones as well.
For me, I like noticing what times of the day I'm most productive and then focusing on, Working within those windows of time, right? So I know I'm not a night person, so I, I focus my work earlier in the day. I like to get done some of the harder things or the more stimulating things, the things that are, make my brain work the hardest.
I try to do those things earlier in the day, and that works best for me. So I'm not telling you that. So you can follow and copy what I'm doing. I want you to think about what times of day you work best and if you can adjust your schedule. Even a little bit around those peak times, that can be a great tactical tip for you to start implementing immediately.
Now, the last tip I wanna share from my list that I've made for today's episode would be to stay organized. Now this is something that is so important. And if you're new to the online space, it can be really challenging depending on what technology you're you're using. So staying organized is key to being productive, but it can take time if you're not used to it, especially if you're not used to using technology.
Like we use Google Workspace here at Dietitian Boss and we've been using it for five years, and so we have to have a system for creating folders and for starring things and color coding and what goes where and who has access and where that can feel really overwhelming. We've gotten better over the years.
It's been a process and then just wake up and know how to use Google Workspace and Google Docs and Google Docs sharing. It's been something that I've learned how to do and I teach our clients this in our, one of our masterminds called Executive for Full-Timer dietitians. I've noticed that some basic functions have.
Using and sharing Google Docs is challenging from some of our clients who just aren't used to that level of organization and that level of file sharing. And so it's something that now I teach and I show them how to organize their files and I show them how to better keep track of their online. Space, right?
Because maybe you're really good at your physical space, but your online space just needs some work. It doesn't mean that you have to have everything tagged and use a project management system and have a system for everything. But it does mean that you have some level of organization and you might have some goals.
You're working towards improving because if you go to your to-do list and you start executing on tasks or projects and things, have a home and you know where to put things and you know how to get things done, and you're not overwhelmed by how you've set things up and you're, let's say Google Workspace or even in your practice management system, like practice better or in.
Let's say if you're using a third party tool like Kajabi, if things are remotely organized, you're more likely to stay on track with your task list. So that is important. Now, I wanna remind you in today's episode that time management is a skill and it's a life skill. It's actually one of the most important life skills because it's really hard to move forward and get things done if you don't have a baseline sense of organization, especially as an online dietitian, because things work differently online.
Require different skills than that that you would need for keeping your physical space organized. So I want you. Those tactics I shared above. And I want you to think, if you can remember one of the examples. I'm gonna review them again with you. I just wanted to see if you could test yourself and see if you remembered.
So I'm gonna go over just a couple of the tactics that I mentioned earlier. The first one was time blocking, right? We talked about how you can. Use time blocking to do similar tasks at one unit of time. I also talked about prioritizing your tasks. Making that to-do list can really help you with getting things done, even just one or two things, but no more than three a day.
We also talked about taking breaks, so the benefit of setting a lunch break or even a 15, 30 minute break throughout the day. Finally limiting distractions and then staying organized. Lastly, I wanna end with, I mentioned I wanna correlate time management with business planning. So when you think about what a business plan is, it can sound kind of scary, but if you just keep it really basic, a business plan should include what your goals are.
So what is it that you want to achieve as a dietitian? Do you want to have a certain number of clients within, let's say a year? Or do you just wanna set something up, like you wanna actually set up your practice management system, or you want to set up your coaching program or your group coaching program or a membership.
So whatever goal you have, whether it's a dollar amount, a client number, or it's something that you can measure, like you have actually created something tangible. If you have that goal, that's the first step. The second step would be marketing. So how are you gonna promote yourself so people know you exist and you wanna have a strategy around how you're gonna market and what that looks like.
The next thing is you're gonna wanna clear target market. Who is it that you're serving, right? And what is the problem? Or the set of problems that that type of person has. So if you're reaching out to type two diabetics who wanna lose weight and manage their A one C, that's a really clear way of describing who your target market is.
You wanna go a little more in depth than that. I'm just giving you an example. And then after you define your, your, so as an overview, your goal. You wanna quantify that, your marketing plan, and then you wanna define your target market. You also wanna think about your sales strategy. How are you going to collect payment?
And what does that process look like? Is it online? And how do you set that up and or is it in person? And what are the skills that you need to acquire in the simple process that you need to make a sale? So those are really the core components of a business plan. It doesn't need to be fancy and it doesn't need to be long.
But I wanted to connect the business plan and time management concepts together in today's episode, because as a dietitian and what I've seen our clients struggle with is making sure that you're giving enough space and time to work on this business plan. And if it feels intimidating, then it needs to be broken down a little bit.
So it's okay if you only have an hour or two a week to spend on your business, but that hour two or two a week should be focused on working towards coming up with a, a loose sense of that business plan and then creating a couple tasks. When you do work on the business, let's assume a few days a week or even one or two days a week, those tasks should be correlated to what the business plan.
I hope today's episode was helpful. If you have any further questions, let us know at Dietitian Boss find us on Instagram at Dietitian Boss. Find us on YouTube, and you can even check out the show [email protected]. And don't forget that we have the library. Dietitian Boss Library is an affordable.
Monthly membership you can pay month to month or annually where we give you access to my proprietary system that breaks down time management, business planning, marketing, sales, everything you need to know, not only to start, but also to grow the Dian business of your dreams on your terms. We'll see you next time.
